MADRID — Javier Marías is one of Spain’s most celebrated novelists, a master of the form whose digressive, metaphysical books, sometimes disguised as thrillers, have made him a perpetual contender for the Nobel Prize in literature.

… Despite these accolades and the acclaimed gifts of his English translator, Margaret Jull Costa, Mr. Marías remains something of a niche author among English-speaking readers.

“Why isn’t he as well known as, say, Orhan Pamuk or Saramago? That’s a real nub,” said Barbara Epler, the president of New Directions, the independent publisher that has brought out 12 of Mr. Marías’s books in the United States since 2000. “I don’t think there are many hyper-intellectual writers who are so obsessively propulsive in their own way. You look at his writing and you say, ‘Oh my God, these long sentences.’ But actually it kind of gets you by the throat.”